In a Fractured Society, Ethnic War Kindles Both Hatred and Desire

In the Land of Blood and Honey

Zana Marjanovic, left, and Goran Kostic are lovers on opposing sides in Angelina Jolie's “In the Land of Blood and Honey.”Credit
Film District

“In the Land of Blood and Honey” tells the story of two acquaintances who become enemies, lovers and each other’s mirror during the Bosnian war. The movie opens in 1992 right before the fighting started and soon after Ajla (Zana Marjanovic), an artist and a Muslim, goes on a date with Danijel (Goran Kostic), a cop and a Bosnian Serb. Recently acquainted, the two meet up at a club, where they fall into each other’s arms, dance and flirt, nestled in an exuberant, raucous humanity, a communion that abruptly ends when a bomb detonates inside the club. The old world falls away and in its place there is dust, blood and Ajla and Danijel staggering toward their newly divided worlds.

The war comes fast and the director, Angelina Jolie, sets its terms ruthlessly. Ajla, along with several dozen other Muslim women, is grabbed by Serbian soldiers and put on a bus. It’s a short, hellish ride — from the bus, one of the soldiers guns down a passerby as casually as if he were skeet shooting — that ends when the convoy arrives at a military base. The women are lined up and stripped of their possessions, and a soldier asks if any can cook. A few nervously raise their hands, making anxious bargains for their lives. One woman says she’s a doctor while another says she can sew. The soldier asks the second woman about her sexual abilities instead and then grabs her and rapes her in front of the others.

Photo

Ms. Marjanovic, left, as Ajla, with Boris Ler as Tarik in this film of the Bosnian war. Both actors are originally from Sarajevo.Credit
Ken Regan/Film District

The scene is, in one obvious respect, something of a didactic illustration of rape as an instrument of war, but it’s also undeniably and rightly disturbing. It rattles the movie and you along with it, and it also introduces the idea that war is very much about the violent domination of women and not just about nation-states, ethnic conflicts, historical grudges and men killing men. Ms. Jolie literalizes this theme by bringing Ajla and Danijel together again at the military camp, where he is a commander. He sees her shortly after the other woman is raped, saving Ajla from being similarly assaulted, a decision that has the quality of a moral choice but may in fact be purely mercenary.

The question of whether Danijel saves Ajla because he is fundamentally good or because circumstances have made him essentially selfish colors everything that comes after. In a perverse twist made believable by the surrealism of war and by the persuasiveness of the lead performances, Danijel takes Ajla as his lover. He saves her, but doesn’t shield her entirely from the terrors of imprisonment. Time slips away amid small cruelties, brutal assaults and a harrowing passage in which the soldiers use the women as shields during a raid on a Muslim enclave. In this scene, with her cinematographer, Dean Semler, Ms. Jolie manages the tricky feat of creating a chaotically violent vision, in which the focus remains intently on those who, in many war movies, are often an afterthought: the women.

This is Ms. Jolie’s directing debut — she also wrote and co-produced the movie — and there’s a somewhat awkward instructional, at times almost proselytizing aspect to the story that seems of a piece with her laudable humanitarian work. That’s especially true in the scenes in which Ms. Jolie switches into full-on expository mode, putting dry, plodding words into the characters’ mouths that would work better in the kind of on-screen textual explanations, with their snippets of history and politics, that open and close the movie. When, for instance, in an early scene, Danijel’s father, a Serbian general (Rade Serbedzija), instructs his son on military matters, he also provides a short history lesson on the region that’s clearly meant for the benefit of those watching the movie.

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Angelina Jolie on the Red Carpet

Angelina Jolie discusses her directorial debut "In the Land of Blood and Honey" at the film's premiere.

Moments like these pull the movie down and you temporarily out of it. For the most part, though, it moves briskly and easily holds your attention, largely through a perverse love story that doesn’t suffer for being such an obvious metaphor for the larger battle raging beyond Ajla and Danijel’s relationship. Both Ms. Marjanovic and Mr. Kostic are very fine (like the rest of the cast they deliver their dialogue in Bosnian) and they navigate the contradictions of their characters’ feelings, the flashes of hate, the surrender to desire, with delicacy. There’s madness in this relationship. But as the glimpses of the outside world show, particularly in some tough scenes involving Ajla’s sister, Lejla (Vanesa Glodjo), there is madness everywhere.

“In the Land of Blood and Honey” is rated R (Children under 17 must be accompanied by an adult). Graphic war violence, including rape.

IN THE LAND OF BLOOD AND HONEY

Opens on Friday in New York and Los Angeles.

Written and directed by Angelina Jolie; director of photography, Dean Semler; edited by Patricia Rommel; music by Gabriel Yared; production design by Jon Hutman; costumes by Gabriele Binder; produced by Ms. Jolie, Graham King, Tim Headington and Tim Moore; released by Film District. In Bosnian with English subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 7 minutes.

In the Land of Blood and Honey

DirectorAngelina Jolie

WriterAngelina Jolie

StarsZana Marjanovic, Goran Kostic

RatingR

Running Time2h 7m

GenresDrama, Romance, War

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Last updated: Mar 30, 2016

A version of this review appears in print on December 23, 2011, on Page C14 of the New York edition with the headline: In a Fractured Society, Ethnic War Kindles Both Hatred and Desire. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe